Dualism and Artificial Intelligence

Dualism is the view that humans are two types of things: physical bodies and non-physical minds. Developers trying to create Artificial Intelligence deny dualism because a non-physical mind (like a soul) would be impossible to create in a physical computer system. Many books in philosophy of mind begin with a chapter rejecting Descartes' version of dualism.

However, the very fact that they are trying to create a mind within a computer actually reveals that they are dualists. By trying to create a mind within a computer, they are claiming that mind is independent of the human body. That is dualism. I have read authors who dismiss the necessity of the "wetware" of brains without realizing that this rejection commits them to dualism.

The only way consistently to avoid dualism is to accept that what we know as a mind has only been possible within the physical body of a human being.

Perhaps computers can or will create some kind of mind, but it will be very different from a human mind. A computer lives in a world free of hunger and the need to reproduce -- independent of the evolutionary forces that created the human mind. It will be interesting to watch the development of robot insects if the developers figure out how to harness evolutionary pressures.